Study Tools

Midnight’s Children

Salman Rushdie

Analysis of Major Characters

Book One: The Perforated Sheet, Mercurochrome

Themes

The Single and the Many

Born at the dawn of Indian independence and destined,
upon his death, to break into as many pieces as there are citizens
of India, Saleem Sinai manages to represent the entirety of India
within his individual self. The notion that a single person could
possibly embody a teeming, diverse, multitudinous nation like India
encapsulates one of the novel’s fundamental concerns: the tension
between the single and the many. The dynamic relationship between
Saleem’s individual life and the collective life of the nation suggests
that public and private will always influence one another, but it
remains unclear whether they can be completely equated with one
another. Throughout the novel, Saleem struggles to contain all of
India within himself—to cram his personal story with the themes
and stories of his country—only to disintegrate and collapse at
the end of his attempt.

Politically speaking, the tension between the single and
the many also marks the nation of India itself. One of the fastest
growing nations in the world, India has always been an incredibly
diverse. Its constitution recognizes twenty-two official languages,
and the population practices religions as varied as Hinduism, Islam,
Christianity, Sikhism, and Buddhism, among many others. Indian culture
is similarly hybrid, having been influenced by countless other cultures over
the millennia of its development. At the same time, however, maintaining
India’s sprawling diversity in a peaceful fashion has often proved
difficult: India’s division into the Islamic nation of Pakistan
and the secular, but mostly Hindu nation of India—a process known
as Partition—remains the most striking example of the desire to
contain and reduce India’s plurality. In Midnight’s Children,
the child Saleem watches as protestors attempt to do divide the city
of Bombay along linguistic lines, another attempt to categorize and
cordon off multiplicity.

Saleem, a character who contains a multitude of experiences
and sensitivities, stands in stark contrast to the protestors who
demand their own language-based region, the strict monotheism of
Pakistan, and Indira Gandhi’s repression of contradictory dissension. His
powers of telepathy allow him to transcend the barriers of language,
while he himself—with his English blood, poor background, wealthy
upbringing, and eclectic religious influeces—reflects India’s diversity
and range. The Midnight Children’s Conference that he convenes is,
in its initial phase, a model for pluralism and a testimony to the
potential power inherent within coexisting diversity, which is a
natural and definitive element of Indian culture. In Midnight’s
Children, the desire for singularity or purity—whether
of religion or culture—breeds not only intolerance but also violence and
repression.

The Unreliability of Memory and Narrative

Factual errors and dubious claims are essential aspects
of Saleem’s fantastic narrative. He willfully acknowledges that
he misplaced Gandhi’s death, an obviously seminal moment in India’s
history, as well as willfully misremembers the date of an election.
He frets over the accuracy of his story and worries about future
errors he might make. Yet, at the same time, after acknowledging
his error, Saleem decides to maintain his version of events, since
that’s how they appeared to occur to him and now there can be no
going back. Despite its potential historical inaccuracies, Saleem
sees his story as being of equal importance as the world’s most
important religious texts. This is not only his story but also the
story of India. The errors in his story, in addition to casting
a shadow of doubt over some of what he claims, point to one of the
novel’s essential claims: that truth is not just a matter of verifiable
facts. Genuine historical truth depends on perspective—and a willingness
to believe. Saleem notes that memory creates its own truth, and
so do narratives. Religious texts and history books alike stake
their claim in truth not only because they are supported by facts
but also because they have been codified and accepted upon, whether
by time or faith. The version of history Saleem offers comes filtered
through his perspective, just as every other version of history
comes filtered through some alternate perspective. For Saleem, his
version is as true as anything else that could be written, not just
because this is the way he has arranged it, but because this is
the version he believes.

Destruction vs. Creation

The battle between Saleem and Shiva reflects the ancient,
mythological battle between the creative and destructive forces
in the world. The enmity and tension between the two begin at the
moment of their simultaneous births. The reference to Shiva, the
Hindu god of both destruction and procreation, reflects not only
the tension between destruction and creation but also the inextricably
bound nature of these two forces. Saleem, as the narrator of Midnight’s Children,
is responsible for creating the world we, as readers, are engaged
in. He represents Brahma, the god of creation. What Saleem creates,
however, is not life, but a story. By delivering Saleem into the
hands of the Widow, Shiva is responsible for the destruction of
the midnight’s children, and yet, by fathering Aadam and hundreds
of other children, he ensures the continuation of their legacy.

Motifs

Snakes

Beginning with the snake venom that saves Saleem’s young
life, snakes play an ambiguous and complicated role in the novel.
Saleem often refers to his favorite childhood board game, Snakes
and Ladders. In the game’s simple formula of good and evil, Saleem
learns an important lesson: for every up, there is a down, and for
every down, there is an up. Missing from the board game, however,
is the ambiguity between good and evil that he later detects as
a natural part of life. Generally considered to represent evil,
snakes are, in fact, much more complicated than that simple generalization
might imply. While venom has the power to kill, it also has the
ability to bring life, and it does so not once but twice in the
novel. Snake venom represents the power of Shiva, who is both destroyer
and procreator in the Hindu pantheon. In Midnight’s Children,
snakes are also associated with Picture Singh, Saleem’s closest
friend, whose career is both dependent upon and destroyed by snakes.

Leaking

Throughout the novel, the past finds ways to mysteriously
insinuate itself into the present, just as Saleem’s personal compulsions
and concerns find themselves inexplicably replicated in national,
political events. Perhaps inspired by his own constantly running
nose, Saleem uses the term leaking to describe
this phenomenon. The lines separating past, present, and future—as
well as the lines separating the personal and the political, the
individual and the state—are incredibly porous. When Saleem begins
having dreams about Kashmir, for example, the stirring images of
his dreams seems to seep into the national consciousness, and India
and Pakistan begin to battle over possession of the beautiful region.
In Midnight’s Children, the interplay between personal
and public, past and present, remains fluid and dynamic, like leaking
liquid.

Fragmentation

Saleem claims that, much like his narrative, he is physically
falling apart. His body is riddled with cracks, and, as a result,
the past is spilling out of him. His story, spread out over sixty-three
years, is a fragmented narrative, oscillating back and forth between
past and present and frequently broken up further by Saleem’s interjections. In
addition to the narrative and physical fragmentation, India itself is
fragmented. Torn apart by Partition, it is divided into two separate
countries, with the east and west sections of Pakistan on either side
of India. This division is taken even further when East and West Pakistan
are reclassified as two separate countries, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Within India, language marchers agitate for further partitions based
upon linguistic lines. New nationalities are created, and with them
come new forms of cultural identity that reflect the constant divisions.

Symbols

The Silver Spittoon

The silver spittoon given to Amina as part of her dowry
by the Rani of Cooch Naheen is responsible for Saleem’s loss of
memory. Even when he has amnesia, however, Saleem continues to cherish
the spittoon as if he still understands its historical value. Following
the destruction of his family, the silver spittoon is the only tangible
remnant of Saleem’s former life, and yet it too is eventually destroyed when
Saleem’s house in the ghetto is torn down. Spittoons, once used
as part of a cherished game for both old and young, gradually fell
out of use: the old men no longer spit their betel juice into the street
as they tell stories, nor do the children dart in between the streams
as they listen. The spittoon is the symbol of a vanishing era, which,
in retrospect, seemed simpler and easier. And so, although Saleem
may not be able to recall the specific association between the spittoon
and his family, the spittoon maintains its symbolic quality as both
a container of memory and source of amnesia.

The Perforated Sheet

The perforated sheet through which Aadam Aziz falls in
love with his future wife performs several different symbolic functions throughout
the novel. Unable to see his future wife as a whole, Aadam falls
in love with her in pieces. As a result, their love never has a
cohesive unity that holds them together. Their love is fragmented,
just as their daughter Amina’s attempts to fall in love with her
husband are also fragmented. Haunted by the memory of her previous
husband, Amina embarks on a campaign to fall in love with her new
husband in sections, just as her father once fell in love with her
mother. Despite her best attempts, Amina and Ahmed’s love also lacks
the completion and unity necessary for genuine love to thrive. The
hole of the perforated sheet represents a portal for vision but
also a void that goes unfilled. The perforated sheet makes one final
appearance with Jamila Singer: in an attempt to preserve her purity,
she shrouds herself completely, except for a single hole for her
lips. The perforated sheet, in addition to preserving her purity,
also reduces to her to nothing more than a voice. The sheet becomes
a veil that separates her from the rest of the world and reflects
her inability to accept affection.

Knees and Nose

The seer, Ramram, predicts the birth of “knees and nose,”
which represent Shiva and Saleem, respectively. In addition to symbolizing each
boy’s special power, knees and nose also play another role. When
Aadam Aziz first kneels down to pray, his knees touch the floor
and his nose hits the ground. Knees and nose, in this instance, represent
an act of prayer, as well as the submission and humility necessary
faith. After hitting his nose on the ground, however, Aadam rejects
that submission, and a hole opens up inside of him. Knees and nose
also become significant with Farooq’s death via a sniper bullet.
Shot, Farooq first drops to his knees, then hits his nose on the
ground. Just as Aadam bowed before god, Farooq bows before death.
Shiva is suspected of killing a string of prostitutes with his powerful
knees, while Saleem uses his nose to discover the most decrepit
prostitute in the city. Knees and nose—just like Shiva and Saleem,
destruction and creation, faith and humility—are inextricably related.